Wouldn't surprise me if Crytek win the suite, sounds like CIG played losely with the license they agreed to. I'm sure CIG feels justified doing what they did (they've probably had to rewrite or refactor almost every part of the engine by now), but I don't think that'll hold up in court.
Crytek is a dying company, while Amazon has their version of the same engine named "Lumberyard" which are still going strong.
Was commented in the Star Citizen thread that perhaps CIG figured they'd take a loss in the breach of contract while jumping over to the other engine. At the same time, this engine change has been around for a WHILE so why is the lawsuit only coming up now?
The weird thing is that Crytek is claiming that CIG is [I]continuing[/I] to breach contract terms involving using CryEngine logos and exposing proprietary Crytek code in a YouTube show about how the SC devs fixed bugs. The CryEngine logo thing makes sense in basic terms because, well, there are no such logos being shown in the current builds, and they've been missing for a year, ever since Alpha 2.6 came out last December.
But the reason that Star Citizen doesn't display CryEngine logos anymore is because, as of 2.6, [I]they stopped using CryEngine[/I] and are using Lumberyard.
So, one of three scenarios is occurring:
1) CIG lied and never switched to Lumberyard for... no? reason except to get sued by Crytek? And I guess to sound cool? This goes into conspiracy theory territory very fast.
2) CIG has taken proprietary CryEngine code, rewritten parts of it, and continues to use the other parts while giving credit only to Lumberyard in violation of the Crytek license.
3) Crytek is freaking out over [I]Lumberyard[/I] code and claiming it belongs to only them, despite them selling full rights to Amazon to turn CryEngine 3.8.x into their own engine and distribute it as open-source, which is going to hurt their lawsuit because they're trying to double dip on something that now belongs to Amazon.
Only lawyers are going to be able to conclusively determine whether it's #2 or #3.
CIG pretty obviously has violated the exclusivity and "promotion for Crytek by being under the hood of Star Citizen" parts of the contract, if Crytek's description of the agreement is accurate, but Amazon is basically guaranteed to still be around and working on their engine in five years so this was probably the least painful way of getting out of a deal that'd started to sour from Crytek's troubles.
According to Erin Roberts, they fully bought out the use of the engine in 2013 anyway, so that even if Crytek wasn't around they could keep going:
[quote]We did an outright buyout of the engine last year and have the source code, so while we hope all the noise about Crytek blows over, as they are great partners and friends to the project[/quote]
[url]https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/2895381/#Comment_2895381[/url]
[QUOTE=nightlord;52974736]According to Erin Roberts, they fully bought out the use of the engine in 2013 anyway, so that even if Crytek wasn't around they could keep going:
[url]https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/2895381/#Comment_2895381[/url][/QUOTE]
Yeah, I did see that. And I wonder how that changes the contract, because, if they already paid Crytek out for the engine... wouldn't that nullify or at least modify the contract they're bitching about now? And if so, is Crytek really just doing this for the publicity and the hopes of a cash settlement to go away and stop bothering their former partners? :v:
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52974751]Yeah, I did see that. And I wonder how that changes the contract, because, if they already paid Crytek out for the engine... wouldn't that nullify or at least modify the contract they're bitching about now? And if so, is Crytek really just doing this for the publicity and the hopes of a cash settlement to go away and stop bothering their former partners? :v:[/QUOTE]
From the full wording of the court document, Crytek allowed the lowered payment for buyout based on the GLA?
Can't entirely tell.
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